Africa - INTER PRESS SERVICE

Minette (38) and her family fled their home in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions after their home was burned down. They have received some plastic sheeting and utensils from the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), and built a temporary kitchen at their new place in Buea. Photo: Tiril Skarstein/NRC

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, May 16 2019 (IPS)

The United Nations must act to prevent further devastation from the escalating crisis in Cameroon, human rights groups said.

Since 2016, worsening violence in Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions has killed almost 2,000 people and displaced over 430,000 people.

For years, the UN has remained largely silent about the crisis. Finally, however, the Security Council held an informal meeting on Monday to address the situation in the Central African country. Still, more needs to be done.

“Security Council members should call on the government of Cameroon and leaders of armed separatist groups to end abuses against civilians in the Anglophone regions and hold those responsible for abuse accountable,” said Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) Central Africa director Lewis Mudge.

“This…is an opportunity to remind abusers that the world is watching,” he added.

Norwegian Refugee Council’s (NRC) Secretary-General Jan Egeland made similar comments to the Security Council, lamenting on the lack of attention and humanitarian response: “When brutal fighting displaces hundreds of thousands of civilians, it usually sets international alarm bells ringing. But, the shocking unmet needs of tens of thousands of people fleeing violence in South-West and North-West Cameroon has resulted in no systematic mediation efforts, no large relief programme, little media interest and too little pressure on the parties to stop attacking civilians.”

“The collective silence surrounding the atrocities is as shocking as the untold stories are heart-breaking,” he added.

What started as protests against the growing dominance of the French language in anglophone regions in 2016 has turned into a conflict between the government and English-speaking separatists who demand a new independent state of “Ambazonia.”

Cameroonian forces have since allegedly cracked down on separatists and local communities, killing scores of civilians, burning homes, and using torture and incommunicado detention with near total impunity.

For instance on Apr. 30, soldiers killed a 16-year-old boy in the Northwest village of Kikaikelaki. According to witnesses, security forces entered the village and started to shoot indiscriminately.

One man also told HRW that authorities burned down and looted 11 homes in the village, stating: “When the military came, I hid for safety. I watched them steal gallons of fuel from a store and set my entire compound on fire. All I had is gone.”

A few days earlier, soldiers raided a health center in the in the Northwest region of Wum in search for wounded separatists and beat some of the medical staff, forcing the clinic to temporarily close.

“As they didn’t find any boys [separatists] they started beating us. I was hit so bad that I could not eat or swallow,” said one nurse.

The armed separatists have also been complicit in the crisis with reports of assaults on soldiers and kidnapping of people, including students and teachers.

In the past three years, at least 70 schools have been destroyed and over 80 percent of schools remain closed, leaving more than 600,000 children out of school in the country’s English-speaking regions.

As Cameroon becomes one of the fastest-growing displacement and humanitarian crisis in Africa, the UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock noted that the level of the crisis is “more alarming than ever.”

“Both the humanitarian and the security situation continue to deteriorate and run the risk of spiralling out of control,” Lowcock told the Security Council.

According to the Under-Secretary-General, the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance has increased 30 percent since 2018 to 4.3 million people today. This means one in six Cameroonians need aid, more than half of whom are children.

In the anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions alone, there are more than 1.3 million people that need aid, eight times as many as the year before.

At the same time, Cameroon’s East and North regions are hosting refugees who fled violence from the neighbouring countries of Nigeria and Central African Republic.

Among the biggest challenges is the lack of funding, Lowcock noted.

In 2018, Cameroon’s humanitarian response plan was just 44 percent funded. This year, only 13 percent of its appeal is funded.

Lowcock highlighted the need to increase awareness of the humanitarian situation, improve financing, and address the underlying causes of the crisis.

Egeland echoed the humanitarian chief’s sentiments, stating: “A group of displaced and disillusioned women I met told me that they felt abandoned by the international community, as well as by the conflict parties. They asked me, where is international solidarity? Where are the African organisations, the donor nations? Where is Europe? This conflict has roots in generations of interference from European powers.”

“The absence of a humanitarian response commensurate to the hundreds of thousands of people in great and unmet need is striking. We are too few humanitarian actors on the ground, and we are gravely underfunded,” he added, noting that the UN country team should be given the necessary financial and human resources.

HRW urged the Security Council to make Cameroon a formal item on its agenda and to press an investigation in order to prosecute those responsible.

Mudge also pointed to the need for the country to allow access and cooperate with international human rights organisations. In April, the Cameroon government denied a HRW researcher entry into the country after documenting a deadly attack by security forces in the Northwest region.

“Cameroon’s move to block a human rights researcher and observers shows its determination to conceal its brutality…the UN Security Council should encourage the country to allow access to international human rights organisations and cooperate with them,” Mudge said.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, who recently visited Cameroon, also raised the issue of the lack of access for international and national humanitarian actors and highlighted the need to act before the situation spirals “completely out of control.”

“I believe there is a clear – if possibly short – window of opportunity to arrest the crises that have led to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, as well as the killings and brutal human rights violations and abuses that have affected the northern and western areas of the country,” Bachelet said.

“It will take significant actions on the part of the Government, and substantial and sustained support from the international community – including us in the UN….the stakes are high, not just for Cameroon itself, but for the whole region,” she added.

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Migrants picked up by the Greek coastal guard in the Mediterranean. The European Union plans to expand its armed border guards from 1,500 to 10,000 by 2027 to patrol its land and sea borders. Credit: Nikos Pilos/IPS.

By Ida Karlsson
BRUSSELS, May 16 2019 (IPS)

The European Union plans to deploy 10 000 armed border guards by 2027 to patrol its land and sea borders. The force will have the power to use armed force on the EU’s external borders.

The European Border and Coast Guard agency, Frontex, currently employs 1 500 border guards and works alongside national border control agencies. The plan is to significantly strengthen the existing force.

The EU guards would intercept new arrivals, stop unauthorised travel and accelerate the return of people whose asylum claim have failed. The guards could also operate outside of the bloc — with the consent of the third country governments concerned.

"The agency will better and more actively support member states in the area of return in order to improve the European Union’s response to persisting migratory challenges,"

Dimitris Avramopoulos, European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs

According to the spending plan for 2021 to 2027 proposed by the European commission, the bloc will increase spending on migration and security by 20,3 billion euros.

The plan to strengthen the European Border and Coast Guard agency was announced by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker in a speech in Strasbourg in September last year.

“External borders must be protected more effectively,” he said.

“The agency will better and more actively support member states in the area of return in order to improve the European Union’s response to persisting migratory challenges,” European Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos says.

Migration has been a divisive issue within EU since the big influx of refugees in 2015. Fears and concerns over migration have led to right wing parties gaining traction and being elected to government in a number of member states.

However European borders are under much less pressure than they were a couple of years ago. The number of arrivals to the EU fell from a height of over 1 million in 2015 to just 144 000 in 2018, according to the International organization for migration, IOM.

Rights groups have warned against creating a “Fortress Europe” with external processing camps and border guards able to use force.

Philippe Dam, Human Rights Watch’s advocacy director for Europe and Central Asia, says they see a clear shift from asylum and protection to border management and returns.

“The EU strategy is to push asylum seekers and refugees away from EU borders. It raises the question what will be the legal pathways for people in need of protection. This is not going hand in hand with improvements of the asylum system. People are sent back to situations of abuse,” he told IPS.

Human Rights Watch have documented unnecessary violence by national border guards in Greece, Bulgaria and Croatia. Hungary is also locking up people at its border and depriving them of food.

“It is unclear how abuses by the new EU borders are going to be investigated. We see the risk of accountability gaps, ” Dam says.

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By Katja Iversen
NEW YORK, May 15 2019 (IPS)

This June, thousands will flock to Vancouver for a global dialogue on how to accelerate progress for girls and women under the banner of power, progress and change.

At the Women Deliver 2019 Conference, the largest in the world for gender equality, delegates will come together to unlock power at three levels: individual, structural, and collective. They will plan for action around how to pull these levers to drive gender parity, especially with regard to women’s economic empowerment.

And not a day too soon. Just last December, the World Economic Forum reported that while the global gender gap is slowly narrowing, the economic participation and opportunity gap stands at 58 percent. Put simply, it will take around 202 years for women to reach economic equality.

The costs of inequality are all of ours to bear. The World Bank estimates that nations leave as much as $160 trillion on the table when women don’t fully participate in national economies.

And we also know the opposite to be true. Research shows that women reinvest more of their income in their families, including in their children’s health and education, than men do—creating a ripple effect that benefits present and future generations.

All this raises an urgent question for decision-makers: If equal economic opportunity is a clear economic and social win for all, why wait 202 years to reap its benefits?

Fortunately, we do not have to wait, provided we take action. The economic gender gap is deep rooted and long standing, which means we have had some years to cook up and test out solutions. The results?

We have learned that if we leverage the power of individuals, structures, and movements to push for girls’ and women’s equal economic participation, we get ourselves a step closer to a gender equal world—along with its dividends.

At the individual level, women around the world are resilient economic agents, overcoming gender-based roadblocks to economic security for themselves and their families every day. Policies and investments that increase their agency over career and finances could go a long way to boost women’s economic empowerment.

And what does a woman with individual agency over career and finances look like? First, she must have access to sexual and reproductive health and rights, including modern contraception and safe abortion—because when a girl or woman can decide whether and when to have children, the chance that she will finish school, get and keep a job, and participate in the economy is much greater.

She also has access to free quality education, including at the secondary and tertiary level. And she has a legal right to resources, including but not limited to the right to access, control, own, and inherit land and capital.

At the structural level, we have also seen tangible progress when governments and corporations move beyond lofty statements on gender equality and reflect their commitments in their budgets and policies.

In 2017, Canada launched its Feminist International Assistance Policy, which targets gender equality in the global fight against poverty. Gender budgeting of this sort—or the practice of earmarking money towards policies that are explicitly mindful of their impact on girls and women – is gaining momentum globally.

Today, gender assessments inform policy decisions and funding allocations in countries like Finland, Ethiopia, and Ecuador.

Corporations have also taken steps to leverage their structural power to lift women up. Global giants like Procter & Gamble, for example, have implementedpay equality across all levels, from junior-level employees to top executives.

Unilever and Nike are showing their strength as in changing the gender narrative through their Unstereotyping and Dream Crazier campaigns. Merck offers flexible work locations, job sharing, compressed workweeks, and back-up childcare.

Companies investing in family-friendly, gender-responsive policies have been rewarded with high returns on their investments, including better worker attendance and increased productivity.

Finally, in an era when women-led and women-focused movements are shaking up the status quo, we have seen the ‘power of the many’ rise to demand work environments and conditions where women can thrive. Movements such as MeToo, #BalancetonPorc, Ni Una Menos, and many others have exposed the magnitude of sexual harassment, misogyny, and gender-based violence in workplaces globally.

Through critical debates, these movements have sparked energy and action to end harassment in the workplace, pay women their fair share, and push for family-friendly policies that allow half the workforce equal rights and opportunity as both workers and earners.

Meanwhile, projects like Girls Who Code, W2E2, and Samasource—and initiatives like International Day of Women and Girls in Science—have surfaced globally to secure a place for women in the future of work. This call to action to nurture female talent in Science, Technology, Education and Math (STEM) is vital, since the fields expecting the most growth are known for low female representation.

For example, girls and women make up only 22% of the AI workforce, lag behind men in digital fluency, and are less likely to study science, technology, engineering, and math. This comes with serious consequences for women’s ability to enter, remain, and advance in the workforce of today and tomorrow.

Every day, women all over the world show that they can build informal and formal businesses out of limited capital and resources. The benefits of investing in their access and control over economic opportunity are immense.

The reforms to help women get there are very much on the table—our job is now to create the momentum to scale them up.

This year’s Women Deliver conference will ask participants to reflect on how they can and will use their power for good. The world will be watching. How will you use yours?

*The original article appeared in Finance and Development published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)

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Excerpt:

Katja Iversen is the President and CEO of Women Deliver*

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Droughts are not new to East Africa. However, abnormally high temperatures in the region are linked to climate change and proving deadly for livelihoods and livestock. Credit: Petterik Wiggers/Oxfam

By Siddharth Chatterjee
NAIROBI, Kenya, May 15 2019 (IPS)

There is barely a corner of human life that will not be affected by climate change, and some of its impacts are already being felt. Consider this, 821 million people are now hungry and over 150 million children stunted, putting the hunger eradication goal, SDG 2, at risk.

Today 15 May, is the United Nations International Day of Families and the theme for this year is, ‘Families and Climate Action’.

The wellbeing of families is central to healthy societies, but is threatened by climate change, especially in the poorest parts of the world.

Across the world what we understand by ‘family’ takes many forms, but it remains the fundamental unit of society. It is where from our earliest days we learn to share, to love, to reason, to consider others, to stand up for ourselves and to take responsibility.

But families face challenges on many fronts and – particularly in the developing world – climate change is perhaps the greatest of these as it is exacerbating hunger and food insecurity.

The focus on families and climate has most resonance in Africa, where it is estimated that climate change could reduce yields from rain-fed agriculture by 50 percent by 2020, jeopardizing the welfare of seven in ten people who depend on farming for a living.

“Environment is the foundation of development,” said Kenya’s President, Uhuru Kenyatta when he launched the government’s 1.8 billion tree-planting campaign in May 2018.

When crops are wiped out by flood or drought, families are robbed of livelihoods and food security. Parents who are already financially vulnerable then struggle to meet the costs of housing, feeding and schooling their children, and of paying for medicines when they are sick.

The greatest killers of children – malnutrition, diarrhoeal disease and malaria – will worsen because of climate change. Children living in developing countries face the greatest risks of all, not always because climate change effects will be worse there than in other countries, but because poverty limits their ability to respond.

Nowhere is this truer than in Bangladesh, with its overwhelmingly young population and almost unparalleled vulnerability to the repercussions of a changing climate. A recent report by UNICEF looked at the impact of climate change on families and children in Bangladesh.

“Climate change is deepening the environmental threat faced by families in Bangladesh’s poorest communities, leaving them unable to keep their children properly housed, fed, healthy and educated,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, who visited Bangladesh in early March 2019.

Increased competition for dwindling natural resources results in political instability, social upheaval, conflicts, forced migration and displacements and once again, children are the main victims. Forced from their homes, many are denied an education, further denting their prospects and threatening social and economic development in some of the poorest areas of the world.

An FAO study says that almost 57% of Kenya’s population lives in poverty, particularly female headed households who are largely reliant on climate-sensitive economic activities including rain fed subsistence or smallholder agriculture.

With Kenya’s considerable advances in mobile technology penetration, important information can be delivered to agricultural actors along the value chain, including weather information and availability and prices of inputs.

With proper investments and policy, Kenya’s youth can spur the transformation of agriculture from subsistence, hit-or-miss propositions to robust commercial operations that can withstand the effects of climate change.

Africa’s biggest threat from climate change will remain the inter-generational downward spiral into deeper poverty that is brought on by decreased farm yields.

Increasing resilience to climate-related shocks in Africa’s agriculture will result in a rise in farm productivity. It will mean women, who make up the largest share of the continent’s small-holder farmers, will have better incomes. Women allocate more of their income to food, health and education for their families, therefore it would also translate into greater gains for children and future generations.

Ending hunger and poverty is the prime mission of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and will demand dramatic shifts in what and how we consume, and above all it will demand cooperation and collaboration on a regional and global scale.

It will not be easy, but for the sake of every family, everywhere, we cannot fail.

A version of this article originally appeared in Reuters

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Excerpt:

Siddharth Chatterjee is the United Nations Resident Coordinator to Kenya.

The post Global Hunger Is Threatening Families Because of Climate Change appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Luis Felipe López-Calva
UNITED NATIONS, May 15 2019 (IPS)

Development is a very uneven process, accompanied by heterogeneity in outcomes across sectors, across regions and across income groups. Such process, Albert Hirschman elegantly established about 60 years ago, constantly generates tensions and demands for redistribution of resources and power. In this sense, conflict is inherent to development.

Long term outcomes in terms of prosperity, equity and peace will always depend on the way in which such tensions are processed. Indeed, it depends on the way in which actors interact to solve these tensions; it depends on effective governance.

If tensions are solved by excluding some groups systematically, inequity and violence are more likely to characterize societies. Indeed, we see in Latin America and the Caribbean that violence has become a mechanism to adapt to these tensions and to process conflict.

The Regional Human Development Report 2013-2014 “Citizen Security with a Human Face” showed the ways in which crime and insecurity undermine development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Crime erodes the well-being of citizens and deters economic growth (Enamorado et al, 2013).

Despite recent progress in citizen security and marginal reductions in violence, LAC remains the most violent region in the world. Indeed, a recently released report by Igarape Institute states that while Latin America is home to 8 percent of the world’s population, 33 percent of all homicides take place there.

Moreover, 17 of the 20 countries with them most homicides in the world are in LAC. While, WHO classifies 10 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants as an epidemic, the average in LAC was 24 in 2016, marginally reduced to 21.6 in 2018.*

We see in the figure below that homicide rates in the region, in particular for some countries in Central America and the Caribbean, are much higher than those of countries with similar levels of GDP per capita.

For example, Honduras and Congo have similar GDP per capital rates, however Honduras suffers 56.5 homicides per 100,000 people, while Congo suffers 9.3. Similarly, while Mexico has close to 20 homicides, Montenegro, with a similar GDP per capital, only has 4.5.

The homicide rate in Colombia is over to 25, while in Lebanon it is 4. What explains these high rates of violent crime in LAC?

Villalta, Castillo and Torres offer an overview of existing theories to answer this question in the region. The economic perspective argues that individuals weight the costs (of eventual punishments) and benefits to decide whether they engage in crime or not.

The social-structural perspective views fluctuations in crime and violence as a result of changes in societal structures, culture and institutions; it supports the idea that rising trends in criminality are a consequence of changing labor market conditions, exclusion, and economic crises.

The political perspective argues that recent processes in LAC countries, such as transitions towards democracy, shifts in political agendas or even the “War on Drugs”, have weakened state control and left inefficient local governments in charge of public safety.

Finally, social disorganization theory argues that, similarly to language, roles and social expectations, antisocial and criminal behaviors are socially learned.

According to this view, areas within cities with low low-income levels, racial heterogeneity, and residential instability are more likely to experience social disorganization. Depending on the country context, a combination of these theories helps explain crime in LAC.

Empirical research offers support for the different theories: the sense of impunity in some countries encourages law offenders to engage in criminal activities; the lacks of confidence in police and justice systems sometimes prevent victims from reporting crimes (moreover, it’s not rare that corrupt police collaborate with organized crime in some countries, for money or fear); support for extralegal violence is significantly higher in societies characterized by little support for the existing political system; and the lack of economic opportunities also plays a role as a strong correlation between crime and youth unemployment has been found.

Evidence also demonstrates the effect of inequality in crime (the case of Mexico is discussed by Enamorado et al, 2016).

As I have mentioned in the past, the pavement of development in LAC requires effective governance as pre-condition to improve productivity, inclusion and resilience. That is, effective governance is about creating socio-economic opportunities, strengthening institutions and enhancing citizen security.

These are challenging tasks as these figures show. Fact-based initiatives such as INFOSEGURA which aims to promote and improve the quality of information on citizen security in the region, are critical public policy instruments to address this challenge.

*Homicides rates are expressed per 100,000 inhabitants throughout the post.

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Excerpt:

Luis Felipe López-Calva is UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean

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By Attila Mong
SOFIA, Bulgaria, May 14 2019 (IPS)

Crammed in the small studio of TVN, a regional station in Ruse, north eastern Bulgaria, journalists share stories about their colleague, Viktoria Marinova. Barely six months ago, Marinova was raped and murdered not far from the station, while jogging on the banks of the Danube.

Her colleagues still struggle to accept the loss, but they all agreed that Marinova, who presented mainly lifestyle shows, was not killed because of her journalism. “This is just a tragic coincidence,” said Ioanna Angelova, the chief editor of TVN.

Marinova’s closest colleagues and ex-husband, Svilen Maximov, who owns the TV station and an internet provider in the region, told me they thought that the investigation was professional, and agreed with the prosecutor’s assessment that it was not motivated by her work. However, some journalists said they think there were unanswered questions.

Their skepticism is perhaps understandable in an environment where investigative reporters are harassed, threatened, or subjected to smear campaigns, and where, according to EU polls, 70 percent of people do not trust law enforcement and the judicial system.

“You don’t need to kill or physically attack a journalist here in order to achieve your goals, there are broader, more systemic threats to press freedom,” said Boryana Dzhambazova, a freelance journalist and member of the Association of European Journalists–Bulgaria. Genka Shikerova, an investigative journalist for a national privately owned station, Nova TV, said, “The situation is getting so much worse, that whatever happened, we simply wanted to believe she was killed for her reporting.”

A few days before her death, Marianova hosted “Detektor,” which was intended to be a weekly flagship news program for TVN. The show aired just once–on September 30–broadcasting an interview with Bulgarian and Romanian investigative journalists who were briefly detained by the Bulgarian police while looking into allegations of fraud involving EU funds.

“Viktoria was the face of the show, but the interview was my idea and I recorded it,” her producer, Ivan Stefanov, said. “If somebody could have been killed, that is me.”

A vigil for TVN host Viktoria Marinova, in Sofia, in October 2018. Prosecutors ruled her murder was not related to her work, but the case highlighted the risks for Bulgaria’s investigative journalists. (AFP/Nikolay Doychinov)

I met one of the show’s guests–Bivol reporter Dimitar Stoyanov–in a secure location in downtown Sofia, rather than at the outlet’s offices. The location of Bivol‘s premises remains unknown to outsiders “for security reasons,” Stoyanov said.

He told me that in Bulgaria, the threat of physical violence is considerably greater for local journalists and reporters like their team members, who work outside the country’s big media companies.

The experiences of Georgi Ezekiev, the publisher of Zov News in Vratsa, backs up that view. His outlet published a joint investigation with Bivol in 2017 that implicated police officers in an alleged drug trafficking ring. Afterwards, he said, he and the chief editor Maria Dimitrova were threatened on social media and in text messages, and someone destroyed his car tires.

“One morning, I discovered that the entrance of my house was decorated as a funeral home with flowers, which was clearly a threat,” he said. On November 22, 2017, Bivol published video of man who was allegedly part of the ring, telling the reporters that his former mafia bosses were planning to eliminate Ezekiev. The publisher said that police denied the allegations made in their report.

“There is a real threat of physical violence for journalists who dig into possible links of between organized crime, law enforcement and politics,” Ezekiev said.

A June 2018 statement from Bulgaria to the Council of Europe’s platform to promote the protection of journalism and safety of journalists said that the Vratsa district prosecutor’s office rejected Ezekiev’s and Dimitrova’s complaints.

In Ezekiev’s case, the prosecutors ruled that the messages he received “could not in any way be classified as a threat,” and in Dimitrova’s case, “the collected data does not prove that there is threat of murder … the messages contain only obscene words and insults and not threats to her or her relative’s lives or health.”

A spokesperson for the prime minister’s press department did not immediately respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment.

Despite the risk of threats and harassment, not all investigative journalists are deterred. Sofia was abuzz during my visit with details from a joint investigation by the Bulgarian branch of the U.S. government-funded Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty(RFE/RL) and local non-governmental organization, the Anti-Corruption Fund.

In a scandal referred to as “ApartmentGate,” the outlets reported on allegations that at least six politicians and civil servants with links to the ruling GERB party had bought luxury flats for below-market prices.

The story resulted in Bulgaria’s prosecutor-general launching an official investigation, and four politicians resigning. [They all denied wrongdoing, the Financial Times reported.]

Prime Minister Boyko Borissov said during a press conference on April 8 that the reports proved, “We have absolutely free media. Nothing is left hidden, no matter who is involved.”

However, local journalists pointed out that is it easier for those working for foreign-funded outlets to take on such investigations.

“We have the resources and the freedom to investigate, which is not the case for most of the Bulgarian media outlets,” said Ivan Bedrov, director of RFE/RL’s Bulgarian service. Bedrov said that with the exception of four to five newsrooms, most lack either the freedom or the resources.

Bedrov received me in their office, an apartment in a quiet street in downtown Sofia. “No insignia, just come upstairs,” he told me. When I asked whether they needed to remain hidden, he responded, “Better to be cautious.”

Bedrov told me that after the story was published, they were targeted by a smear campaign in pro-government media that tried to discredit the reporting by presenting conspiracy theories that the journalists were American agents, or that Russians had infiltrated the American-funded organization to attack the Bulgarian government.

When I met Polina Paulova, the investigative journalist who uncovered the scandal, however she seemed relaxed, greeting me with a broad smile. On a cafe terrace in Sofia, overlooking the president’s office and a little further up, the government building, she explained that such an investigation would have been impossible in a purely Bulgarian-funded media outlet.

“You need grants and independence,” she said, arguing that conditions for free reporting have largely deteriorated in recent years. She said she doubted that the judiciary investigation would come to anything “Finito,” she said bitterly, adding that she thinks the case will soon die out as most scandals do.

“The ApartmentGate is a unique case and a lucky coincidence,” said Konstantin Pavlov, a sociologist and researcher at Sofia University. Had it not been for European Parliamentary elections in May, local elections in autumn and the relaunch of RFE/RL, he said, the implications of the scandal could have been different.

“The story has quickly become too big to conceal and the government could not control anymore,” said Pavlov. Big commercial stations picked up the story and even pro-government media outlets covered the political reactions, he said.

However, he said, most Bulgarian media are owned by businessmen who buy outlets not as a financial investment, but to buy favors with the political elite, and journalists working for such outlets may follow their owner’s wishes to keep their jobs. “This is an oligarchic pluralism, at best,” said Pavlov.

A lack of media plurality was highlighted in a 2018 report by the non-governmental organization, Union of Publishers in Bulgaria. Its “White Paper on Media Freedom in Bulgaria” detailed how a conglomerate that it referred to as the “Peevski media empire,” controls an array of national and regional newspapers, television channels, news portals, publishing house, digital television broadcast, and 80 percent of the newspaper distribution market.

It is controlled by Delyan Peevski, the former head of the intelligence services and MP for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), an opposition party that mostly support the government, as does his media empire, according to the White Paper.

CPJ sent an email to Peevski for comment through the press department of the DPS and his parliamentary office, but did not immediately receive a reply.

Another challenge for the independent media is smear campaigns. Ivo Prokopiev, publisher of the weekly Capital and the daily Dnevnik, is a regular target of what he and international organizations including the OSCE have described as administrative harassment: record fines for investigative reporting into financial irregularities, ramped up investigations into the publisher’s business dealing, and authorities freezing his assets.

Rossen Bossev, an investigative journalist for Capital, told CPJ that his weekly is often qualified as “fake news” by pro-government newspapers, and that smear campaigns target him and his family, referring to him as an anti-Bulgarian conspirator or U.S. agent.

“Sometimes I feel like a most wanted criminal in the country,” he said, smiling as he recalled how the police showed up one Saturday morning last year at Capital’s newsroom, with a subpoena related to an ongoing defamation lawsuit.

Irina Nedeva, the president of the Association of European Journalists in Bulgaria, told me the that the country was experiencing “the gradual return of political pressure, the type of pressures which characterized Bulgaria, during the 1990s, the early transition years from communism to democracy.”

A 2017 report by the association highlighted pressures from owners and advertisers, and found that 26 percent of journalists admitted to restricting their criticism toward the government and the powerful to satisfy owners. “We expect that our upcoming report in 2019 will record deteriorating conditions,” said Nedeva.

*Attila Mong is a former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow and a Hoover Institution research fellow, both at Stanford University. He was awarded the Pulitzer Memorial Prize for Best Investigative Journalism in 2004 and the Soma Investigative Journalism Prize in 2003.

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Excerpt:

Attila Mong* is a freelance journalist and Berlin-based correspondent for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Europe

 
In October 2018, Viktoria Marinova, a host for TVN, was raped and murdered near the station's studios. When CPJ's Europe correspondent, Attila Mong, spoke with her colleagues and other journalists during a trip to Bulgaria last month, they said that while they don't believe the attack is linked to Marinova's work, it has highlighted the dangers and pressures for investigative reporters.

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In order to make the case for privatizing state-owned enterprises, their real problems were often exaggerated in order to make the case for privatization from the 1980s.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, May 14 2019 (IPS)

Privatization has not provided the miracle cure for the problems (especially inefficiencies) associated with the public sector. The public interest has rarely been well served by private interests taking over from the public sector. Growing concern over the mixed consequences of privatization has spawned research worldwide.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Adverse economic consequences
Both Bretton Woods institutions have long been aware of the adverse impacts of privatization. For example, IMF research acknowledged that privatization “can lead to job losses, wage cuts and higher prices for consumers”. Similarly, World Bank research on Argentina, Bangladesh, Chile, Ghana, Malaysia, Mexico, Sri Lanka and Turkey found huge job losses when big SOEs were privatized.

In the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 1999-2004, privatization more adversely affected women workers. IMF and World Bank safety net or compensation proposals were either too costly for the public treasury or too administratively burdensome.

Diverting private capital from productive new investments to buy over existing state-held assets has actually slowed, rather than accelerated economic growth. This significantly diverts funding from productive new investments, augmenting economic capacities, to instead buy over already existing assets. Instead of contributing to growth, this simply changes asset ownership.

Listing privatized SOEs on the stock market subjects them to short term managerial considerations, typically to maximize quarterly firm earnings, thus discouraging productive new investments for the longer term. This short-termist focus tends to marginalize the long-term interests of the enterprise and the nation.

Thus, stock market listing implies the introduction, perpetuation and promotion of a short-termist culture. This is often inimical to the interests of corporate and national development more generally, and improving economic welfare more broadly.

Private ownership not in public interest
Both evenly distributed as well as concentrated share ownership undermine the corporate performance of the privatized enterprise, whereas SOE ownership could overcome such collective action problems. Where the population has equal shares following privatization, such as after ‘voucher privatization’, no one has any particular interest in ensuring the privatized company is run well, worsening governance problems.

Thus, public pressure to ensure equitable share ownership may inadvertently undermine corporate performance. As shareholders only have small equity stakes, they are unlikely to incur the high costs of monitoring management and corporate performance. Thus, nobody has an incentive to take much interest in improving the corporate operations.

This ‘collective action’ problem exacerbates the ‘principal-agent’ problem as no one has enough shareholder clout to require improvements to the management of the privatized enterprise due to everyone having equal shares and hence modest stakes. Conversely, concentrated share ownership undermines corporate performance for other reasons.

Fiscal challenge
Privatization may postpone a fiscal crisis by temporarily reducing fiscal deficits with additional ‘one-off’ revenues from selling public assets. However, in the long-term, the public sector would lose income from profitable SOEs and be stuck with financing and subsidizing unprofitable ones. More resources would also be needed to finance government obligations previously cross-subsidized by SOE revenue streams.

As experience shows, the fiscal crisis may even deepen if new owners of profitable SOEs avoid paying taxes with creative accounting or due to the typically generous terms of privatization. For example, Sydney Airport paid no tax in the first decade after it was privatized even though it earned almost A$8 billion; instead, it received tax benefits of almost A$400 million!

Typically, investments in SOEs do not show up as government development expenditure or debt. Instead, they are hidden away as government-guaranteed debt, which accrue as ‘contingent liabilities’. Thus, the government remains ultimately responsible. Problems arise when government ministers force SOEs to undertake projects, make investments, or buy overpriced equipment or services, especially when not even needed.

Adverse public welfare impacts
Privatization tends to stoke inequality. Due to the macroeconomic consequences of privatization, reduced investments in the real economy would mean less job growth, stagnant wages, or both.

Diversion of available funds to buy existing assets diminishes resources available to expand real economic capacities and capabilities. Thus, by diverting private capital from productive new investments to privatize existing public sector assets, economic growth would be slowed, rather than enhanced.

Privatization gives priority to profit maximization, typically at the expense of social welfare, equity and the public interest. In most instances, such priorities tend to reduce jobs, overtime work opportunities and real wages for employees besides imposing higher user fees or charges on customers or consumers. Thus, privatization, tends to adversely affect the interests of public sector employees and the public, especially poorer consumers.

Short-termist developmentalism?
Investments by the new private owners are typically focused on maximizing short-term profits, and may therefore be minimized. Profit-maximizing commercial or ‘economic’ costing has generated various problems, often causing services and utilities, such as water and electricity, to become more inferior or expensive.

Without subsidies, privatized companies typically increase living costs, e.g., for water supply and electricity, especially in poorer, rural and more remote areas. Thankfully, technological change has reduced many telecommunication charges, which would otherwise have been much higher due to privatization.

Privatization was supposed to lead to fair competition, but private owners have an interest in retaining SOEs’ privileges. Hence, there has been concern about: (i) formal and informal collusion, including cartel-like agreements; (ii) privileged bidding for procurement contracts and other such opportunities; and (iii) some interested parties enjoying special influence and other privileges.

Costs of living have undoubtedly increased for all. Privatization has often resulted in dualistic provision of inferior services for the poor, and superior services for those who can afford more.

The implications of dual provision vary greatly, and may well be appreciated by those who can afford costlier, but better, privatized services, especially as many resented cross-subsidization of services to the needy.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a former economics professor, was United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development, and received the Wassily Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought.

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Excerpt:

In order to make the case for privatizing state-owned enterprises, their real problems were often exaggerated in order to make the case for privatization from the 1980s.

The post Privatization Solution Worse than Problem appeared first on Inter Press Service.

One in three people in the UK changed their attitude towards disability thanks to the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Employment for persons with disabilities in the United Kingdom grew by nearly one million since June 2013. Pictured here is an athletics event from the London 2012 Paralympic Games. Credit: Nick Miller/CC By 2.0

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2019 (IPS)

The power of sport can help make global sustainable development a reality, and such power transcends cultural, linguistic and even physical barriers.

In recent years, disabled athletes have gained greater visibility—an essential step in recognising their talent, abilities, and importance.

In December, the United Nations General Assembly formally recognised the power of sport as an “enabler” of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the “invaluable contribution” of the Paralympic Movement in promoting peace, development, and greater inclusion.

“[The Resolution] reaffirms the universality of sport and its unifying power to foster peace, education, gender equality and sustainable development at large,” International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) President Thomas Bach said.

“Thanks to the UN, we now have a strong tool that encourages states and sports organisations to work together and develop concrete best practices,” he added.

Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed reiterated these sentiments recently, noting the important role that sport has played in all societies throughout history.

“Sport can help promote tolerance and respect, contribute to the empowerment of women and young people, and advance health, education and social inclusion,” she said on the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace.

“Let us intensify our shared efforts to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and truly recognise the power of sport to change the lives of individuals, communities, countries and beyond,” Mohammed added.

Just last week, a campaign by the International Paralympic Committee was awarded with the UN Sustainable Development Goals Action Award.

The ‘Transforming Lives Makes Sense for Everyone’ campaign features three short films which reveal the impact of the London 2012 Paralympic Games on employment for persons with disabilities which, in the United Kingdom, grew by nearly one million since June 2013.

The group also found that one in three people in the UK changed their attitude towards disability thanks to the London games.

However, such work starts at the grassroots level.

In Nepal, the National Women’s Blind Cricket Team won the First International Women’s Blind Cricket Series held in Pakistan in February 2019, proving that women with disabilities can be successful competitive athletes.

“People living with disabilities often undermine their ability to play sports due to mobility restrictions and negative stereotypes and perceptions towards people living with disabilities. But despite these challenges, my team and I persisted,” said team captain Bhagwati Bhattarai-Baral.

“I feel proud to have represented my country in an international platform. It has also boosted my confidence and sense of leadership. People in my community have now started believing that blind players are as capable as anyone else. If provided with opportunities, women and girls with disabilities can also demonstrate competence,” she added.

Similarly, at the age of 12, Mohamed Mohasin’s passion for cricket grew as he started playing the sport with his classmates, despite having had polio as an infant which damaged his legs.

The sight of a batter in a wheelchair often drew his local community of Morkun in Bangladesh to watch him play.

Mohasin’s ambition did not stop there. Since wheelchair cricket players are excluded from Paralympic cricket, he asked himself, “Why not start a wheelchair cricket team?”

After a long road full of obstacles, including lack of funding and misperceptions, Mohasin finally established the Wheelchair Cricket Welfare Association Bangladesh (WCWAB) in 2010 and became the captain of the National Wheelchair Cricket Team to help ensure the participation of physically challenged youth as well as to showcase their talents.

“Earlier the scenario was too difficult as people very rarely imagined that the disabled can play outdoor games in Bangladesh. But we have proved through wheelchair cricket that this is possible,” Mohasin said.

“Things are now changing, and we are getting lots of interested people and players,” he added.

The team, which was formed with 26 players, has grown exponentially to around 200 players, 170 of whom are registered wheelchair cricketers.

They organised the first ever National Wheelchair Cricket Tournament in Bangladesh in 2016, and have since participated in major tournaments such as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) International Cricket Tournament in Bangladesh, Asia Cup in India, and won the Taj Mahal Trophy in 2014 as well as the International Bilateral Wheelchair T20 Cricket Series. Young Bangla, the largest youth forum in Bangladesh, also recognised Mohasin and WCWAB as one of the top 10 youth initiatives in the country.

Despite obstacles, Bhattarai-Baral and Mohasin both continue to inspire others and promote a future where disabled persons are recognised.

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By Haider A. Khan
DENVER, May 13 2019 (IPS-Partners)

With the most recent spat between China and the US—not uncharacteristically if unintentionally engineered by Trump’s announcement of increasing tariffs from ten per cent to twenty five percent unless China agrees to his “deal”whatever that may be we seem to be back to the drawing board in the ongoing US-China trade war. Last week I received news from many experts including our own China watchers that a deal was imminent. Although my esteemed colleague Prof. Zhao was also in this group, he sagely pointed out even such a deal and seeming end of the trade war will not resolve the fundamental rivalries between US, the status quo power and China, the rising power. Now it seems that he had left out of the equation the unpredictable nature of Trump’s behavior.

Haider A. Khan

James Massey, a former FBI crisis negotiator, may be closer to the truth than my academic colleagues in this instance. Massey is not convinced that US President Donald Trump has the ‘discipline or patience, or an appreciation for the strategic instruments that successful international relations require’ I confess I am only an economist. But unlike many other economists I have made the well-confirmed findings of the rapidly advancing field of cognitive science and cognitive psychology the cornerstone of my microanalysis of human economic behavior. Although this new 21st century science is no guarantee for certainty—quite the contrary, in fact— a cognitive analyst would point to the tendency of Trump to bully people into submission. But what may work with relatively powerless underlings will almost certainly not work with even an opponent in the international arena much weaker than the US in economic and military terms. The crucial factors on the other side are minimum defense capability and political will to withstand pressure.

China is not a weak opponent. It also has more than a minimum defense capability and plenty of political will to withstand pressure from bullies like Trump and his cronies. Trump and his gang may have met more than their match in Chinese leadership under Xi. Such is also the verdict of experts in psychological warfare.

According to them Trump’s default negotiating style that consists of bombast, threats and litigation domestically may be largely ineffective internationally against leaders like Xi. All evidence also points to another major difference between Trump and Xi. While the latter seems to be good at focused listening that may be the key to dealing with tense negotiations, Trump seems inattentive to details, narcissistic and intent on humiliating his adversaries. That is not the surest path to global leadership when the relative power of the US is nowhere near what it was immediately after WW2. A reality-check should suggest working multilaterally with other global leaders in mutually respectful and beneficial partnership. Unfortunately, that is not the art of the deal that Trump administration cares about very much.

So, what is likely to happen? I am not so eager to predict possibilities especially in light of how wrong my colleagues have been in this fraught area. But if I had to bet, I would put my money on the proposition that China will keep the doors open for negotiation, but will never submit to bullies like Trump. There must be analysts in Washington and in the US universities and think tanks who have read the history of the Chinese revolution and the role both nationalist and anti-imperilalist ideas played in this process. The Chinese fought patiently a long political and military anti-imperialist war to liberate their country. Whatever differences may exist among the leadership and within the people, they will be united against foreign bullying and pressure. Meaningful negotiations with China can begin only if the US and other powers recognize this historically based cognitive reality.

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By Andrew Norton
LONDON, May 13 2019 (IPS)

The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’ report on the global state of biodiversity is shocking but not entirely surprising. The question is, how much more evidence and repeated warnings will it take for governments, companies and financial institutions to wake up to the urgency and act?

The accelerating destruction of nature and climate change are the twin emergencies threatening humanity today. There is no more time for inaction or delay ― the report’s findings are loud and clear.

The report lays out the scale of the unfolding crisis. Around one million animal and plant species are threatened with extinction, many within decades. Three-quarters of the land-based environment and about two-thirds of the marine environment have been significantly altered by human actions.

With new areas such as the high seas and Arctic increasingly accessible due to technological developments and climate change, this will increase if urgent and effective action is not taken.

We are all dependent on the rich diversity of nature for our quality of life – and ultimately for our survival. But our actions, from over-fishing to the pursuit of monocrops and the destruction of natural forests, are undermining the complex natural world at an unprecedented rate.

This is everybody’s problem. For years, the issue of biodiversity and its fate have been treated as niche subjects. But without stopping the acceleration of its destruction, none of the environmental and development challenges – from tackling climate change and upholding the Paris Agreement to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals – can be achieved.

Radical, comprehensive changes are needed to save the diversity of life on which we all depend. The climate crisis amplifies the threat to global biodiversity in multiple ways.

The accelerating die-back of coral reefs due to rising ocean temperatures is a striking example. Acting with urgency to get to net zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible is absolutely key to protecting nature and people alike.

Governments must act immediately to end the destructive subsidies, including for fossil fuels and industrial fishing and agriculture, which are driving us towards ecological collapse. These encourage the plundering of the land and ocean at the expense of a clean, healthy and diverse environment on which billions of women, children and men depend now and in the future.

The money saved should be used to support sustainable industries that provide livelihoods for men and women living in poverty, such as small-scale fisheries and give incentives for the preservation of the natural world on a global scale.

Such resources could be used to support a green jobs guarantee whereby people can be supported to work on both the energy transition and on maintaining landscapes that are carbon and biodiversity-rich, safeguard key habitats, and provide the multiple benefits to human society that come from healthy ecosystems.

Importantly, the report highlights the key role that indigenous peoples and local communities’ play in the fight to save nature. Although biodiversity is declining in their areas due to land being under increasing pressure from extractive industries, infrastructure development and agriculture, it is declining more slowly, reflecting the valuable role they play in the stewardship of the natural world.

It is imperative that greater attention is given to strengthening indigenous and local communities’ rights to manage their land and resources sustainably. They must be able to play an active part in all efforts to conserve biodiversity, while their right to use nature is protected.

People who are living in poverty are being disproportionately hit by the destruction of nature, which as the report shows, is accelerating faster than at any other time in human history. From rural women in poor countries who have the responsibility to gather wood for fuel, to people in informal settlements who are becoming more vulnerable to storm damage due to the loss of such natural barriers as mangroves, poverty goes hand-in-hand with precarious lives that are extremely vulnerable to ecological collapse.

It is crucial the progress that has been made in development is not undone by the interconnected crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

The contribution that diverse nature and natural ecological systems make to development ― for both rich and poor ― needs to be included in economic decisions made by governments and business. Without it, development gains will increasingly be lost and ultimately, the foundations of our economies and societies will be threatened.

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Excerpt:

Andrew Norton is Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

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By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM / ROME, May 13 2019 (IPS)

On 25 April, Joseph Biden announced his candidacy for the US presidency, declaring that his decision was based on fears of Trump being re-elected:

• ”He will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation, who we are, and I cannot stand by and watch that happen.”1

Joe Biden´s statement mirrors rising concerns that Trump´s agenda, characterized by isolationism, xenophobia and anti-multilaterism is threatening not only the US, but the entire world. Our biosphere, the absolute fundament of human existence, is on the verge of collapsing, while petty ”national interests” are sabotaging an international unity that might reverse a catastrophic development.

A blatant example of the Trump adminstration´s refusal to engage in crucial inititives to save the planet was when the US on the 10th of May refused to sign an amendment to the UN Basel Convention.2 The agreement that was signed by 187 countries intends to restrict an ongoing dumping of hard-to-recycle plastic waste to poorer countries.

Can the world afford to watch the Trump administration withdraw US participation from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the UN Human Rights Council, as well as less known treaties such as the Universal Postal Union? US representatives have walked out of negotiations on the Transpacific Partnership Trade Agreement and the UN Global Compact for Migration, as well as renouncing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), i.e. the Iran Deal. Furthermore, the Trump administration has announced the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement with Russia and ended cooperation with UN rapporteurs on human rights violations within the US, while cutting down funding for UN Peacekeeping and UN agencies dealing with human rights, Palestinian refugees, population control, sustainable development and global warming.

Contempt for multilateralism and cynical exploitation of fears for negative impacts of immigration are being expressed by the slogan America First, which Donald Trump in March 2016 declared as a theme for his administration.3 He used the phrase in his inauguration address and it was part of the title of the federal budget for 2018,4 referencing to increases to the military, homeland security and cuts to spending towards foreign countries. The history of this specific slogan may expose some of the xenophobia and isolationism lurking behind Trump´s politics.

The phrase was first used in the summer of 1915. The Committee for Immigrants in America had by the beginning of the last century been founded by Francis Kellor, who during social work in teeming tenements of New York had been shocked by immigrant women´s victimization. She decided that the only way to amend the appalling situation would be a solid, governmental effort of Americanization of all immigrants, i.e. forcing them to learn English and as soon as possible integrate them into The American Way of Life. Kellor´s views came over a number of years to have a great influence over US politics. However, the social objectives soon faded away, overtaken by fears that harmful influences brought from abroad by unwanted immigrants would eventually erode the American nation from within. The Committee for Immigrants´ original motto was thus changed from Many Peoples, But One Nation to America First.

The slogan became a common feature in populist harangues by the media tycoon William Randolph Hearst, the model for Orson Welles´s famous movie Citizen Kane and an unscrupulous manufacturer of fake news. America First also became a salient propaganda feature during election campaigns of both Woodrow Wilson and Warren G. Harding. How could a battle cry for isolationism and xenophobia develop in a nation constituted by people from all over the world, which leaders furthermore tend to present their political system as a beacon of freedom and tolerance?

Already by the 17th century, several European settlers had through the Reformation become convinced that Catholicism was steeped in the moral depravity of tyrannical popes. Anti-Catholicism became a fundamental conviction among Anglo-Saxon puritans who dominated colonial settlements. From England and Germany they had brought with them a strong belief in constant threats from Catholic conspirators. Such fears later fed into an aversion against Irish and Italian immigrants. Concerns that soon were coupled with suspicions that migrants coming from countries suppressed by popes, emperors and other despots were likely to nurture dangerous, radical ideas, entirely different from peaceful notions of ”orderly and hardworking” Anglo-Saxons, who had inherited their moderateness from freedom-loving, imaginary Goths. This ”primitive tribe” became a collective designation for Angles, Saxons and Jutes, considered to be the ancestors of English, Dutch, Scandinavian and German immigrants. When radical refugees and persecuted Jews appeared from Europe, such befuddled notions merged with The Red Scare, a conviction that desperate politics emerging from a class-ridden Europe, like anarchism and Bolshevism, would eventually destroy American democracy.

In 1916, these fears were by Madison Grant in his influential book The Passing of the Great Race mixed up with racism. Grant warned that hereditary traits, radicalism and religious beliefs of “inferior white races” would mingle with those of “third-rate people” already present in the US, by whom he meant people of African descent, and “mongrelize” the “Nordic man” into “a walking chaos, so consumed by jarring heredities that he is quite worthless.”5

After World War I, when immigration was resumed after a low ebb and combined with the onset of economic depression, a wave of crime, wrangling in the Congress and the scandalous consequences of prohibition, Anglo-Saxonism, anti-radicalism, anti-Catholicism and racism flooded public opinion. Several US citizens came to believe that social troubles were caused by the tenacity and secret cunning of alien influences, combined with a lack of solidarity and resistance among ”true Americans”. The battle cry of America First echoed through a nation that began to withdraw into itself, while the Government established a nationality quota system, officially based on the pre-existing composition of the American population, but in reality a racist scheme to effectively ban immigration from Asia and Africa and limit migration from countries like Italy, Poland, Russia and Romania. An example – during the first weeks of quota implementation more than a thousand desperate Italians were confined to a ship anchored in the Boston harbour, before being released and repatriated. Later on, the system became better organized and unwanted immigrants were routinely blocked from entering the US.6

Considering this history, the battle cry of America First seems to be an apt slogan for the Trump administration. An anti-immigration stance combined with fears of foreign-inspired terrorism, where ”Catholicism and Judaism” have been superseded by Islam as a threat to the ”American Way of Life”. Where East and South Europeans, Asians and Africans have been superseded by Mexicans and Central Americans as dangerous invaders. Where ”circling the wagons” no longer means protecting settlers from the native population, but support to contempt of multilateralism that makes the policymakers of an entire nation prepared to expose the whole world to lethal danger. A more apt slogan than America First and Let´s Make America Great Again would probably be the French President Emmanuel Macron´s alternative motto Making our Planet Great Again.

If Joe Biden sincerely means that ”climate change is an existential threat to our future and that remaining in the Paris Agreement is the best way to protect our children and global leadership”7 combined with his experience of and support to international cooperation, he might become an able president, in spite of his advanced age and occasional gaffs. Let us hope that he and the many well-intentioned and rational US citizens will be able to restore faith in their institutions and their capacity to engage in mulitareal cooperation.

1 Burns, Alexander and Jonathan Martin (2019) “Joe Biden Announces 2020 Run for President, After Months of Hesitation” The New Times, April 25.
2 The Covention intends to control transboundary movements of hazardous waste and their disposal
3 Haberman, Maggie and David E. Sanger (2016) “Transcript: Donald Trump Expounds His Foreign Policy Views” The New York Times, March 26.
4 America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again.
5 Quoted in Higham, John (1981) Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860 – 1925. New York: Atheneum, p. 272.
6 Most of the information above is based on Higham´s book.
7 Joe Biden´s twitter on May 31, 2017.

Jan Lundius holds a PhD. on History of Religion from Lund University and has served as a development expert, researcher and advisor at SIDA, UNESCO, FAO and other international organisations.

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The girls were promised jobs in Malaysia and brought from refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar. – AFP/File

By Editor, Dawn, Pakistan
May 12 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Dawn) – Twenty-three teenage Rohingya girls were rescued after being brought from refugee camps to the capital Dhaka to be sent to Malaysia by air, Bangladesh police said on Sunday.

Dhaka police also arrested four human traffickers including a Rohingya couple and recovered over 50 Bangladeshi passports from them on Saturday.

Police spokesman Mokhlesur Rahman said they raided a residence in the northern part of the city and found the teenagers hiding in a room behind a tailoring shop.

“They were promised jobs in Malaysia and brought from refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar,” he told AFP, referring to the Rohingya settlements in Bangladesh’s southeastern coastal district.

The girls — aged between 15 and 19 — could have been potential victims of forced prostitution, the official said.

“We have filed cases against the four arrested persons and sent the girls back to their camps in Cox’s Bazar,” Rahman said.

Abul Khair, local police chief of Ukhiya, where Kutupalong, the largest refugee camp in the world, is situated, said he received the girls and would send them to their homes in the camps.

Some 740,000 Rohingya Muslims fled a brutal military clampdown in Myanmar in August 2017 and arrived in Bangladesh to join another 300,000 already living in the refugee camps.

Desperate for a better life and an economic future, the refugees, including in particular teenage girls, easily fall prey to human traffickers roaming in the overcrowded camps.

Thousands of the refugees have risked their lives travelling to Malaysia and Thailand — mainly by boat — when the Bay of Bengal is calm before monsoon season sets in at the end of May.

Bangladeshi authorities have stopped over 300 Rohingya this year alone from attempting such perilous boat journeys on rickety fishing boats.

Many have also attempted to fly to Malaysia and Middle Eastern countries by procuring Bangladeshi passports and travel documents.

Jishu Barua, an aid worker specialised in human trafficking prevention, said he dealt with 100 cases of human trafficking in the camps in the last six weeks.

“But this figure represents only a small portion of what is actually going on,” he told AFP.

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

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Gul Jan, 90, and her family fled their village in Ab Kamari district and went to Qala-e-Naw in search of drinking water and food during the 2018 drought in Afghanistan. When this photo was taken in 2018, she, her son Ahmad and her four grandchildren had been living in a makeshift home in the Farestan settlement for internally displaced people for at least four months. Courtesy: NRC/Enayatullah Azad

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, May 11 2019 (IPS)

More people are displaced inside their own countries than ever before, and only higher figures can be expected without urgent long-term action, a new report found.

Launched by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), the new Global Report on Internal Displacement examines trends in internal displacement worldwide and has found a dismal picture.

“This year’s report is a sad reminder of the recurrence of displacement, and of the severity and urgency of IDPs’ needs. Many of the same factors that drove people from their homes now prevent them from returning or finding solutions in the places they have settled,” said IDMC’s Director Alexandra Bilak.

“The findings of this report are a wake-up call to world leaders. Millions of people forced to flee their homes last year are being failed by ineffective national governance and insufficient international diplomacy. Because they haven’t crossed a border, they receive pitiful global attention,” echoed NRC’s Secretary-General Jan Egeland.

According to the report, over 41 million people were estimated to be living in internal displacement as of the end of 2018, 28 million of which were new displacements.

A majority were due to natural disasters and just three countries accounted for 60 percent of all new disaster-related displacements.

While many were saved, many are also still without homes.

“Of course, evacuating people saves their lives but doesn’t mean that they don’t remain displaced after the crisis ends particularly if their houses have been destroyed,” IDMC’s Head of Policy and Advocacy Bina Desai told IPS.

For instance, the Philippines alone recorded almost four million displacements, more than any other country worldwide. A significant portion were displaced as a result of pre-emptive evacuations to mitigate the impacts of typhoons between July and December 2018.

Desai expressed concern that despite investment in disaster risk reduction, communities continue to be highly exposed and remain vulnerable.

“Displacement is becoming not a one-off issue but more and more cyclical and repeated experience for people,” she said.

Displaced families receive household items in North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Photo: Norwegian Refugee Council/Martin Lukongo.

The report also found that internal displacement is an increasingly urban phenomenon, both as communities become displaced from conflict in cities such as Hodeidah in Yemen to IDPs seeking refuge in urban centres such as Mogadishu in Somalia.

Desai also noted that those in search of safety in cities are often at risk of displacement again.

In Somalia, authorities have forcibly evicted thousands of IDPs who often live in informal settlements and have even demolished houses, leaving them homeless again.

Among the worst mass eviction incidents occurred in December 2017 when 35,000 people living in 38 IDP settlements were evicted after a dispute about land ownership.

As cities continue to be a sanctuary and grow exponentially in size, local residents also face heightened risk of displacement as a result of natural disasters.

IDMC calculated that approximately 17.8 million people worldwide are at risk of being displaced by floods every year, 80 percent of whom live in urban or periurban areas.

Desai highlighted the need for long-term investment in long-term measures in order to help prevent displacement in the first place including disaster-resilient infrastructure and resilience-building. Understanding displacement risks must therefore be an essential component in development plans.

“Any investment decision you make in development planning, be it in education or health infrastructure or security measures, will have an impact on future risk which will go either up or down,” she told IPS.

“It is not like an external event that actually pushes people out of their homes, but it is the way that they are exposed or vulnerable to that hazard event that will determine whether they are at risk of displacement,” Desai added.

However, funding for disaster risk reduction (DDR) remains woefully insufficient.

According to the Overseas Development Institute, just 0.4 percent of the total amount spent on international aid went to DDR in the last two decades.

But at the end of the day, the solution is largely political.

“Ultimately, if national governments do not have an interest and do not have an incentive in investing in and reducing internal displacement, it won’t happen,” Desai said, pointing to the need to provide strong data and evidence that relates to political priorities and provide incentive to act.

While most governments continue to be concerned with refugee flows, it is imperative to also focus on IDPs who often turn into refugees when there are no solutions or options left for them. 

“We do think IDPs deserve much more visibility…the urgency is clear because we have seen those places where we do have strong data that not just people themselves are immensely affected but also development gains are being eroded,” Desai said.

“Host communities and countries that have high levels of internal displacement are not going to be able to achieve their national development goals or the international sustainable development goals,” she added.

“All displaced people have a right to protection and the international community has a duty to ensure it,” Egeland echoed.

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Survivors of a boat carrying migrants that sunk in the Mediterranean during the night of 9 and 10 May, gather at a shelter in the Tunisian coastal city of Zarzis on May 11, 2019. Photo: AFP / FATHI NASRI

By AFP
TUNIS, May 11 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(The Daily Star) – Around 60 migrants most of them from Bangladesh have died after their boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea after it left Libya for Italy, the Tunisian Red Crescent said today.

Survivors told the Red Crescent the tragedy unfolded after some 75 people who had left Zuwara on the northwestern Libyan coast late Thursday on a large boat were transferred to a smaller one that sank off Tunisia.

“The migrants were transferred into a smaller inflatable boat which was overloaded, and 10 minutes later it sank,” Mongi Slim, a Red Crescent official in the southern Tunisian town of Zarzis, told AFP.

Tunisian fishermen rescued 16 people and brought them to shore in Zarzis.

The survivors said they spent eight hours trapped in the cold sea before they were spotted by the fishermen who alerted the Tunisian coastguard, Slim said.

The bodies of three people were plucked out of the waters on Friday, the Tunisian defence ministry said.

Survivors said the boat was heading to Italy and had on board only men, 51 from Bangladesh, as well as three Egyptians, several Moroccans, Chadians and other Africans.

Fourteen Bangladeshi nationals, including a minor, were among the survivors, said the Red Crescent.

“If the Tunisian fishermen hadn’t seen them (migrants), there wouldn’t have been any survivors and we would have never known about this” boat sinking, said Slim.

Charity ships have plied the Mediterranean Sea to rescue migrants in large numbers but the number of rescue operations have dwindled as these vessels have come under fire, namely from the populist Italian government, over their action.

Italy’s far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has imposed a “closed ports” policy, refusing to allow migrants rescued at sea to enter his country.

On Friday, however, more than 60 migrants disembarked in Italy after two boats which had left Libya faced difficulties at sea and needed assistance.

The UN agency for refugees UNHCR called for stepped up search and rescue operations to avoid future tragedies in the Mediterranean, which it calls the “world’s deadliest sea crossing”.

“Across the region we need to strengthen the capacity of search and rescue operations,” said Vincent Cochetel, the agency’s special envoy for the Mediterranean.

“If we don’t act now, we’re almost certain to see more tragic events in the coming weeks and months,” he warned.

According to the UNHCR, the journey across the Mediterranean “is becoming increasingly fatal for those who risk it”.

“In the first four months of this year, one person has died (crossing the Mediterranean) for every three that have reached European shores, after departing from Libya,” it said.

Libya, which has been wracked by chaos since the 2011 uprising that killed veteran dictator Moamer Kadhafi, has long been a major transit route for migrants desperate to reach Europe.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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Millions of South Africans headed out in large numbers, some braving cold and wet weather to cast their ballot in the country's sixth democratic elections on May 8, 2019. Courtesy: Crystal Orderson

By Crystal Orderson
CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 10 2019 (IPS)

Millions of South Africans headed out in large numbers, some braving cold and wet weather to cast their ballot in the country’s sixth democratic elections this week. The 2019 election was one of the most competitive and contested elections that also saw a whopping 48 parties on the national ballot—up 300 percent from a mere 10 years ago.

For years South Africa’s majority was excluded from this democratic right by the minority apartheid government and the first time they were able to vote was in 1994. The ruling African National Congress, ANC, has won every election since then and there was never any doubt that the ruling party will would again remain in power. However, it was the margin of victory that was key in these elections.

The ruling party received over 58 percent of the vote along with another mandate to rule the country for the next five years. The main issues for citizens in this election was more jobs, a better economy and an end to rampant corruption. For the ANC to keep momentum and make an impact, it will have to deliver on these issues over the next two years.

Senior Economist Dawie Roodt told IPS that the main issue now is what President Cyril Ramaphosa’s plans are for the economy and dealing with corruption. “Another issue we are watching is the appointment of the new cabinet and the ministers he will appoint in the key portfolios like finance. The challenges are daunting and there are a  few key priorities how is he going to deal with Eskom and some other economic issues like job creation and the state’s debt levels.”

A Mandate for Change
In this election, Ramaphosa needed a victory to turn the tide against corruption and service delivery protests. In 2014, the ANC won 62.15 percent of the votes, with the Democratic Alliance, DA, receiving 22.23 percent while new political kid on the block, the Economic Freedom Fighters, EFF, took 6.35 percent.

In 2014 voter turnout was at 73,48 percent and this week it dropped by nine percent to around 65 percent—with the decline coming as a surprise to many.

The lack of show at the polls indicates a disillusioned electorate, unhappy with the current state of politics. Ramaphosa will have to work hard to get the electorate to believe in the country again.

Economist Khaya Sithole told national radio station 702 Talk Radio that Ramaphosa needs to keep the momentum of the changes to the economy. “He has the 12-24 months to deliver on the promises of jobs and people will question him if he is going to do the right thing or not.”

Roodt says South Africans voted for Ramaphosa so that he can make the changes needed and there is renewed hope that he will announce a smaller and leaner cabinet to implement these changes.

“Ramaphosa promised us a smaller government and cabinet. I am however not too concerned around the size of the cabinet, I just want to see that we efficient people to be in charge, ministers are often also appointed because of their loyalties and not per se for the job they do,” said Roodt.

All eyes on Ramaphosa
Casting his ballot in Soweto on election day, Ramaphosa told a large media contingency that this year’s vote served to remind people of the 1994 elections.

“In 1994 our people were just as excited as this because they were heralding a new period, a new future for our country and today this is what I am picking up.”

The 66-year-old Ramaphosa added that the vote was also about confidence and about the future, admitting that the party had failed in some cases.

“Over the 25 years, we have achieved a great deal. We have not yet filled the glass. The glass is half full,” he said.
South Africans are desperate for a turn around. The extent of corruption under former President Jacob Zuma’s rule, have left many feeling hopeless, angry and disillusioned.

In recent years, South Africans have become poorer, struggling to support their families with a sluggish economy. With one in three people without jobs, there is growing desperation to see change. And all eyes are on Ramaphosa, who is under enormous pressure to save the sinking ship.

Ailing economy
And South Africans want the new ANC-led government to be decisive in its decisions to re-build a stagnant economy and create much-needed jobs.

The other headaches for Ramaphosa include:

• increasing debt—SA’s debt to GDP ratio will peak at just over 60 percent in 2023/2024;
• continued low growth projections—the growth forecast for 2019 was revised downwards from 1.7 percent to 1.5 percent;
• and failing state-owned entities, like the power utility Eskom.

Ramaphosa has set himself an ambitious task of attracting 100 billion dollars in new investments that he believes will kick start the ailing economy.

Eskom the albatross around South Africa’s neck

Ramaphosa will have to do some tough things, including cutting the number of ministries, reducing the massive government wage bill, and cleaning up corrupt state-owned entities, like Eskom.

Eskom is the largest utility in Africa yet it is also the albatross around Ramaphosa’s neck. The government has had to bail it out with millions of taxpayer’s dollars. The power utility has a debt burden of more than 28 billion dollars and rating agencies see this as one of the biggest risks to Africa’s most industrialised economy.

During Finance Minister Tito Mboweni’s Budget Speech in March, he outlined financial support of about five billion dollars to the cash-strapped utility over three years, with support totalling about 10 billion dollars over the next decade as part of the government’s rescue plan.

Roodt said that at the moment the agenda for Eskom is to basically “just survive”. “The dismal state of Eskom is that they are in debt and they need billions to just survive,” he said.

Roodt added he wanted to see action from Ramaphosa concerning Eskom’s excessive wage bill.
“There are far too many people being paid excessive wages and there are about between 20 and 30 000 to many people working there, we need to cut down and trim Eskom.”

Economists argue this is not enough. Ramaphosa will have to go ahead with the break up of the entity and will have to look at public-private partnerships—but the trade union federation may not support this.

This is part of the problem for Roodt. “Cutting the workforce will not be easy—unions are part of the tripartite alliance with the ANC, you will need strong political leadership and hopefully Ramaphosa will have the mandate.”

The tripartite alliance is an alliance between the ANC, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party (SACP). Traditionally the latter two parties have always stood with the ANC in elections. However, in 2017, the SACP contested the country’s municipal elections. For this week’s elections the SACP contested once again as part of the tripartite alliance.

All eyes will be on Ramaphosa, a seasoned negotiator who chaired the country’s constitutional-making process, to see how he handles this matter.

What now? Some of the tasks ahead…..

There are 400 seats in the national assembly and during the 2014 election, the ANC had 249 seats, down from the 264 seats it had from the 2009 election. In 2019 this is likely to be less, and at the time of print, the ANC had over 200 seats. This will mean that the ANC will have a majority to make the changes that are needed.

After a decade of former president Zuma’s rule, rampant corruption, maladministration and the high unemployment rate have created a ticking time bomb for the country. Ramaphosa wants to bring renewal to South Africa to ensure job creation and an end to rampant corruption.

He has promised this would be the major issues on his agenda. South Africans will have to wait and see whether he will be committed to this once he takes office at the Union Buildings in Pretoria in June.

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Muhammadu Buhari, President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak

By Selorm Branttie
ACCRA, May 10 2019 (IPS)

Days before Algeria’s 82-year-old strongman president Abdelaziz Bouteflika was ousted from power, the country made one last ditch attempt to keep control: it shut down the internet.

A few weeks later, 75-year-old Sudanese president Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s rule ended with a picture of mainly female protestors going viral on social media platforms.

If there has been any common threads in the unseating of authoritarian African leaders in the past few months, then it has been age and the internet.

Indeed, the main contenders in Nigeria’s recent general elections were the incumbent Muhammadu Buhari, 76, and Abubacar Atiku, 72. Together with the likes of Cameroon President Paul Biya, Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and a host of other African leaders, they share one thing in common: they are all over 70.

Yet, they are still keen on their presidential ambitions with some even amending constitutional provisions to extend their tenures – sometimes from hospital beds in other countries.

Only five percent of Africans are aged 65 and above, but the political expectation is that this five percent should set the agenda for the 70 percent or so Africans who are under 35 years of age. Already, the average life expectancy across Africa is between 61 and 65 years, which means that all these leaders are, statistically speaking, already living on borrowed time.

If there has been any common threads in the unseating of authoritarian African leaders in the past few months, then it has been age and the internet.

As more technology has become available to an average person in Africa, the continent’s technology challenge has  moved beyond access to harnessing tech innovations to how it can improve performance in areas like education, or health. We need leaders who value and are fluent in these new technologies and their promise.

Countries like Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Chad and Mali have some of the lowest human development indices in the world according to the UNDP’s Human Development Indices for 2018. These countries are also ones with some of the highest costs per 1 gigabyte of internet data — at around $10.

Despite these costs, across the continent are real examples of how the internet is changing lives. The mobile economy in 2017 alone added US$150 billion to African economies

But the internet revolution in Africa is encountering a bottleneck: elderly African leaders. And the reality is that these laggards are mostly  born generations before the rise of the internet. It has become obvious that the struggle of Africa’s older leaders to understand technology has had dire consequences for their citizens.

In July 2018, Uganda put a tax on social media and mobile money payments to raise revenue and “control gossip”. Within a day, certain accounts indicated a 60 percent drop in transactions. By December 2018, Uganda had lost 5 million internet users as a direct result of these taxes. The sharp drop in remittances meant that businesses were impacted in areas like agriculture, remittances from urban areas to family and relatives in rural areas as well as  basic e-commerce.

The Global Network Initiative reports that  between 0.4 percent and 1 percent of a country’s daily GDP is lost because of internet shutdowns, or about $6.6 million per 10 million users daily.

On January 15, 2019, Zimbabwe shut down internet connectivity for three days in a bid to quell public protests. According to Netblocks, this shutdown affected an estimated 17 million people and cost the nation’s economy some $17 million dollars.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s greatest asset is its youth. There are 420 million people between 15-35, of which just more than 30 percent are unemployed, according to the African Development Bank. Because the median age of an African today is 19.4 years, leaders should focus on transforming  African economies to become centers of entrepreneurial success.

Dr Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia, currently Africa’s youngest leader at 42, believes that strengthening e-commerce and virtual government is more important than running state monopolies. By selling off half of the state-owned Ethio Telecom, he has demonstrated the willingness to open up the telcom sector to innovation.

Of course, it can also be said that younger African leaders are not always best equipped to modernize their nations. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, 61, has improved e-governance and innovation to the point where his country ranks just behind Mauritius in a World Bank assessment of African business environments. His younger neighbor, the 54-year old Pierre Nkurunziza in Burundi, however still ranks among the lower performers in Africa 14 years in power after gaining power at the age of 40.  Youth itself is not necessary, but a youthful, outward-looking mindset is.

Many African leaders are also aware that the internet can provide the very tools that can threaten their political control.  They will be watching warily the situation in Algeria, where activists have used the internet as part of a campaign to challenge 82-year-old president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who has been in power for two decades.

One easy way African countries could revitalize their political leadership would be to limit political leaders to the civil service retirement age.

In Nigeria, the presidential contest was declared for Buhari, who at age 76 is 16 years older than the mandatory retirement age for Nigerian civil servants. Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed, on the other hand, would have to work another 13 years to even qualify for early retirement in his country.

African voters should ask themselves which type of leader is better equipped to guide their countries into the future.

Selorm Branttie is the Global Strategy Director of mPedigree, which designed the world’s first SMS based anti-counterfeiting solution. He is very passionate about how technology can create a new future for Africa and the global south.  

The post The Age of the Internet Calls for Younger Leaders appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, May 10 2019 (IPS)

The rise of right-wing nationalism and the proliferation of authoritarian governments have undermined human rights in several countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

As a result, some of the international human rights experts – designated as UN Rapporteurs – have either been politically ostracized, denied permission to visit countries on “fact-finding missions” or threatened with expulsion, along with the suspension of work permits.

The Philippines government, a vociferously authoritarian regime, has renewed allegations against Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the UN Special Rapporteurs on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

The Deputy Chief of Staff for Civil-Military Operations, Brigadier General Antonio Parlade, told reporters that the United Nations had been infiltrated by the Communist Party of the Philippines through Tauli-Corpuz.

But a group of UN human rights experts denounced the politically-inspired charges against a longstanding UN envoy on human rights.

“The new accusations levelled against Ms. Tauli-Corpuz are clearly in retaliation for her invaluable work defending the human rights of indigenous peoples worldwide, and in the Philippines,” the experts said

Anna-Karin Holmlund, Senior UN Advocate at Amnesty International, told IPS “We have witnessed several deeply worrying personal attacks by UN Member States against the independent experts, including personal attacks, threats of prosecution, public agitation and physical violence in the past year”.

“It is clear they are targeted for simply doing their job,” she added.

On occasion, she noted, these have been carried out by members of the UN Human Rights Council that are expressly required to uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights.

“Such attacks are part of a disturbing trend of a shrinking space for human rights work more broadly in many places around the world,” declared Holmlund.

Meanwhile, the Government of Burundi has closed down the UN Human Rights Office triggering a protest from Michelle Bachelet, the UN Human Rights Commissioner in Geneva.

And under the Trump administration, the US has ceased to cooperate with some of the UN Rapporteurs, and specifically an investigation on the plight of migrants on the Mexican border where some of them have been sexually assaulted—abuses which have remained unreported and unprosecuted.

The government of Myanmar has barred a UN expert from visiting the country to probe the status of Rohingya refugees.

In March, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Diego García-Sayán, postponed an official visit to Morocco because the government “has not been able to ensure a programme of work in accordance with the needs of the mandate and the terms of reference for country visits by special procedures.”

He was scheduled to visit the country from 20 to 26 March “to examine the impact of measures aimed at ensuring the independence and impartiality of the judiciary and prosecutors, and the independent exercise of the legal profession.”

“It is most regrettable that the suggestions of places to visit and schedule of work were not fully taken into consideration by the Government. It is an essential precondition for the exercise of the mandate of Special Rapporteur that I am able to freely determine my priorities, including places to visit,” he said.

Referring to the situation in Colombia, Robert Colville, Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said May 10: “We are alarmed by the strikingly high number of human rights defenders being killed, harassed and threatened in Colombia, and by the fact that this terrible trend seems to be worsening”

“We call on the authorities to make a significant effort to confront the pattern of harassment and attacks aimed at civil society representatives and to take all necessary measures to tackle the endemic impunity around such cases.”

In just the first four months of this year, he pointed out, a total of 51 alleged killings of human rights defenders and activists have been reported by civil society actors and State institutions, as well as the national human rights institution.

The UN Human Rights Office in Colombia is closely following up on these allegations. This staggering number continues a negative trend that intensified during 2018, when our staff documented the killings of 115 human rights defenders.

And last month, Israel revoked the work permit for Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine Director of Human Rights Watch, prompting a protest from the United Nations.

“This ruling threatens advocacy, research, and free expression for all and reflects a troubling resistance to open debate,” a group of UN experts said. “It is a setback for the rights of human rights defenders in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Dr Palitha Kohona, a former chairman of the Israeli Practices Committee, mandated to monitor human rights violations in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, told IPS that official visits to the West Bank were barred by Israel (“and not for want of trying”) but not to Gaza, which they could not.

He said several approaches were made through the Israeli Missions in New York and Geneva to seek approval to interview persons on the ground in the West Bank, but to no avail.

“In 2011, we waited an extra day in Amman hoping to get approval which was never forthcoming. A ministerial visit by delegates from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to the West Bank was stopped at the Allenby Bridge by Israel”.

The Rafah crossing was controlled by Egypt and the Gaza authorities. Entry to Gaza for the Committee was through Sinai following a long bus ride from Cairo across the Sinai desert, said Dr Kohona, a former Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations.

“I visited Gaza twice in 2010 and 2011 with the Committee. I believe that these were the only two occasions that the Committee was able to visit Gaza.”

Egypt itself seemed to make the entry uncomfortable for the Committee, perhaps to keep Israel happy, he said.

In 2011, the Committee was held up for over four hours at the Rafah Crossing to Sinai. “Eventually I had to contact the Sri Lanka embassy in Cairo by phone to get us across”.

According to a report in the New York Times March 10, Leilana Farha, the UN Special Envoy for Housing was “shocked” to discover that some of the Egyptians she interviewed in Cairo’s poor areas “had suffered reprisals for talking to her.”

“Some were flung from their homes by officials, their belongings strewn in the streets. Others were harassed by the security services or barred from leaving Egypt,” said the report from New York Times correspondent Declan Walsh in Cairo.

“The foreign ministry accused Farha of fabricating stories and implied that she was a terrorist sympathizer, bent on smearing Egypt”.

The Times said “such defensive, conspiratorial talk is standard fare on Egypt’s television stations, which are heavily influenced by (Egyptian President) el-Sisi’s government. And it has seeped down into the street.

The United Nations currently has 38 Rapporteurs or independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council in Geneva to investigate violations of the legitimate political, economic and legal rights of individuals and minorities worldwide going as far back as 1982.

These fact-finding missions, undertaken by UN Rapporteurs, cover a wide range of issues, including investigations into torture, extra-judicial killings, arbitrary executions, involuntary disappearances, racism, xenophobia, modern day slavery and the abuse of the rights of migrants and indigenous peoples.

Urmila Bhoola of South Africa, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, told IPS she has visited Niger, Belgium, Nigeria, El Salvador, Mauritania, Paraguay and, lastly Italy, in October 2018.

She pointed out that “country visits are only conducted upon invitation from governments”.

“I have issued requests for country-visits to many countries but due to the mandate’s name and focus, member states are often reluctant to invite the mandate on contemporary forms of slavery, to conduct a visit”.

In this sense, she pointed out, member states may not openly refuse a visit but may not reply to country visit requests.

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, member states generally cooperate with the independent human rights experts in the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.

The number of States that have never received a visit by a mandate holder has diminished to 22. And the number of States that have issued a ‘standing invitation’ to Special Procedures has now reached 120 Member States and 1 non-Member Observer State.

Some States receive more than one visit per year. Each year, on average, Special Procedures conduct around 80 visits to different States.

At this time, said a spokesperson, “ we have not been notified of any changes concerning cooperation with Special Procedures by the United States’ Permanent Mission here in Geneva. Indeed, they have been in contact with several mandate holders recently”.

In December, 2017 the Government of Myanmar informed the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar that all access to the country has been denied and cooperation withdrawn for the duration of her tenure.

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@ips.org

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At the 2018 Stockholm Forum

By Dr Marina Caparini
STOCKHOLM, May 10 2019 (IPS)

Let us be blunt: the world is in crisis. Peace, human rights, our planetary ecosystem, and our systems of conflict management and global governance are under enormous strain.

Global military expenditures reached 1.8 trillion in 2018, their highest level in real terms since the Cold War, driven by great power competition between the US and China. The ‘Doomsday clock’ is now set at 2 minutes to midnight, as the world has moved closer than ever to nuclear self-destruction as a result of US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal (the Joint Common Plan of Action (JPOA)), and withdrawal from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, and uncertainties about North Korea’s nuclear plans.

And, buttressed by regular reports about the growing effects of global warming, rapidly declining biodiversity and the extinction of thousands of species, climate change is now widely acknowledged by citizens and experts in many countries as the world’s biggest threat.

The past decade has seen a reversal of the long-term trend of declining civil wars. According to the UN-World Bank publication Pathways to Peace, the world has seen sharp increases in the number of internal armed conflicts in the world over the past decade, most involving numerous non-state armed groups, and such conflicts are both increasingly internationalized and protracted.

Mostly as a result of conflict, some 68.5 million people are currently displaced, with the overwhelming majority of refugees residing in poor or middle-income countries. While there are often multiple, complex causes of conflict, key structural factors include weak institutions in combination with political and economic exclusion.

In developing and post-industrial states alike, factors such as growing income inequalities and the continued failure of most countries to significantly control corruption are undermining governance and faith in the ability of states and the political class to uphold the public good. Across the world we are witnessing a rise in populism rooted in anti-pluralism and exclusionary nationalist politics, attacks on the basic democratic tenets and a crisis of democracy.

With the global rolling back of human rights, there is a shrinking of civic space and dramatic decline in countries considered safe for journalists and for human rights defenders and women’s rights defenders.

And within the leading global governance bodies, such as the UN Security Council, divisions among major powers and failure in leadership to constructively address current crises in Libya, Sudan, Yemen and Venezuela are calling into question the continued credibility of such arrangements.

Within this fraught context, leading individuals from the humanitarian, development and security fields will be convening in Stockholm next week*. The Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development, cohosted by SIPRI and the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will discuss how the world can better respond to emergencies and crises, and how it can stabilize and strengthen prospects for peace and longer term development.

By bringing together subject and regional specialists, humanitarian workers, human rights defenders, peace researchers, police and military representatives, political leaders and policy makers, the Forum seeks to stimulate essential, sometimes difficult, conversations among those who are working to support peace, rule of law and development embodied by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The international and professional diversity of those who will attend reflects the recognition of the need for interdisciplinary understanding of drivers of conflict, coordination across sectors and comprehensive approaches in responding to violence, hunger and injustice.

Substantial participation by representatives from the Global South reflects the need to develop truly people-centred approaches that are context specific, politically informed and locally owned. It embodies the realization that technocratic, template approaches to preventing conflict and assisting shattered states and societies are not acceptable and do not work.

With its commitment to advancing peace through evidence-based data, research and analysis, SIPRI is proud to co-host the Forum and to contribute to global efforts to find solutions to the grave problems that confront us.

*Follow the Forum Plenary live-stream on 14 and 16 May: Opening Session and High-Level Panel on Mediation: https://youtu.be/yaGj1RQOVKY Closing High-Level Panel on Inclusive Peace: https://youtu.be/ks28SC5MWhM

Read more: https://www.sipri.org/events/2019/2019-stockholm-forum-peace-and-development

The post An Urgent Need to Advance Peace appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Dr Marina Caparini is a Senior Researcher and Director of the Governance and Society Programme at SIPRI. Her research focuses on peacebuilding and the nexus between security and development.

The post An Urgent Need to Advance Peace appeared first on Inter Press Service.

By Geneva Centre
GENEVA, May 10 2019 (IPS-Partners)

(Geneva Centre) – As a new deadly tidal wave of violence, hate speech and exclusion sweeps across the world, it is now high time for the international community to a joint stand against racism, racial discrimination and intolerance and to address the fundamental structural root causes of these scourges through the implementation of the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA).

This was the key thread of the “Emergency Assembly on the Rise of Global Racism” that was held on 9 May at the United Nations Office in Geneva. The Assembly was organized jointly by the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue, the World Against Racism Network and the Global Coalition for the International Decade for People of African Descent.

“We are gathered today to reach out, to revive public awareness and to warn against the worrying rise of extremist ideologies. They are taking openly aggressive forms particularly through Islamophobia, Afrophobia, anti-Arabism, Christianophobia and anti-Semitism. Innocent people in all parts of the world continue to suffer daily from this scourge one could describe as ‘social cancer,” the Executive Director of the Geneva Centre and moderator of the conference Ambassador Idriss Jazairy said.

The Executive Director of the Geneva Centre said that prejudice based on culture, fostering intolerance and promoting religious discrimination constitutes a denial of the enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms. It was the antinomy of a culture of peace, tolerance and most of all of empathy in a spirit of human fraternity, he underlined to the audience:

“Although the DDPA was adopted 18 years ago, it continues to remain fully valid up to this day. It calls for a consolidated strategy to restore rights and dignity for all. Taking into account recent trends witnessed in New Zealand, Sri Lanka and California, we are challenged to counter this scourge. It is empathy and not ethnicity that creates a community and lays the foundation for sustainable and inclusive societies.”

Ambassador Jazairy likewise warned against compounded forms of racism such as those targeting women wearing headscarf in Europe who are discriminated both as Muslims and as women whose freedom of choice as to their own bodies is challenged. He appealed to decision-makers to apply the Outcome Declaration “Moving Towards Greater Spiritual Convergence Worldwide in Support of Equal Citizenship Rights” adopted by the 25 June 2018 World Conference on religions and equal citizenship rights that received personal endorsement by the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

He also drew the attention of the meeting to the historical event organized by the government of the United Arab Emirates on 4 February 2019 bringing together HH Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al Azhar His Eminence Ahmed-el Tayib who adopted the now famous document on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together.”

No country can claim to be free of racism, racism remains a global concern

In his keynote speech, the Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the African Union to UN in Geneva HE Ajay Kumar Bramdeo warned that the resurgence of global racism is taking more violent and aggressive forms “Trends of intolerance and xenophobia are increasing, both in intensity and scale, We must all recognise that no country can claim to be free of racism, that racism is a global concern, and that tacking it should be a universal effort” Ambassador Bramdeo said.

Ambassador Bramdeo underscored the importance of enhanced international cooperation to address all forms and manifestations of racism and appealed to all States to ensure the effective implementation of the DDPA. He appealed to the forthcoming meeting of the Group of Independent Eminent Experts to come to the “obvious conclusion that the DDPA continue to be one of the most important documents in the global fights against racism, racial discrimination and related intolerance.”

HM Dòwoti Désir-Hounon Houna II, Chair of NGO Committee for the Elimination of Racism, Afrophobia & Colorism underlined that the rise of Afrophobia and discrimination against people of African descent is on the rise in societies worldwide. The DDPA – she said- articulates methodologies to address these ‘social ills’. Decision-makers must therefore ensure the effective implementation of the DDPA and develop anti-racist policies to counter these scourges, Queen Hounon Houna II from Benin said in a video statement.

The Secretary at the World Against Racism Network and Secretary-General of the International Youth and Student Movement for the United Nations (ISMUN) Mr Jan Lonn thanked the wide-ranging audience for their interest in this crucial issue. He underlined the fact that this conference was being held in the UN, which was born after the anti-fascist backlash of the Second World War. It was highly symbolic as the DDPA now needed further support and action from UN member States for implementation at national level as well as within UN bodies such as the Human Rights Council, ECOSOC and the General Assembly. He also stressed the need for much greater awareness promotion in terms of a global campaign against racism.

The Executive Councillor of the Executive Council of the City of Geneva Mr Remy Pagani observed that the struggle against all forms and manifestations of racism and exclusion is a long-term challenge which has to be addressed resolutely. He recalled how dangerous it could be to be exclusively inward-looking and reject the Other. He mentioned that Geneva had a special responsibility in this regard, as historically, it has been for centuries a refuge for victims of persecution in other countries of Europe and today represents a city which is the humanitarian capital of the world. In conclusion, he stated that the commitment of all those present to promote justice, equality and peace was essential and invaluable.

The Chair of the National Forum Civil Society of People of African Descent in the Netherlands Dr Barryl Biekman stated that the socio- economic neglect and marginalization of people of African descent in the Netherlands, partially influenced by historical and present-day developments, must be challenged. She stated that the betterment of the position of people of African descent can only be achieved and by changing negative mind-sets on all levels and by collectively focusing on inclusivity of the multiple perspectives present in the Dutch multicultural society.

UN human rights mechanisms must take the lead in addressing racism

The Chair of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent Dr Ahmed Reid referred to the Working Groups’ Thematic Report to the UN General Assembly on stereotypes. He added that it was a cruel paradox that in the year of the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, racism, racial discrimination, afrophobia, xenophobia, nativism and related intolerance is continuing to prevail all over the world. He stressed the need to fight stereotyping of people of African descent through black criminalization and black profiling both of which contribute to racial violence. He concluded by proposing that racism be fought through a culture of encounter and dialogue and real empowerment of all segments of society.

The Chair of the Group of Independent Eminent Experts on the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action Ms Edna Roland shared with the audience the four major issues that the Group she chairs had identified. The first was the question of racist hate speech and its use or misuse by politicians to try to influence public opinion and hence the results of elections. The second consisted in considering and analysing and understanding racism as being a result of history, in particular colonialism. Thirdly, she observed that the Sustainable Development Goals do not mention the ethics and issues of racism which represent an impediment to development. She suggested therefore that national governments should include this in their national SDP implementation plans provisions concerning the implementation of the DDPA. Lastly, she stressed the need to develop a multi-year outreach programme to implement the DDPA including mobilizing NGOs and seeking new ideas to fight against xenophobia, racism and related intolerance.

Faith communities can strengthen the international community to end racism

Reverend Dr Jin Yang Kim, Coordinator of Pilgrim-teams for Justice and Peace World Council of Churches (WCC), said in his statement that faith communities must play an active role in countering the rise of global racism. Reverend Yang Kim highlighted that the WCC actively addresses racism and racial discrimination in collaboration with churches worldwide and undertakes pilgrim visits to countries in Asia.

“These pilgrim team visits will be informed about the status of relevant UN recommendations on racial discrimination prior to visiting countries. Such recommendations are those which have been issued by the Human Rights Council (OHCHR) under the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) mechanism, by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, and the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, regarding the country to be visited,” Reverend Yang Kim stated.

In a video message by the UN Representative of the United Methodist Church and President of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CoNGO), Mr Levi Bautista warned against the aggressive display of hatred, racism and bigotry played out in different societies. He appealed to decision-makers and civil society representatives to join forces in dismantling and eradicating racism in all of its forms and manifestations.

“Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance all work, singularly and collectively, to diminish our common humanity. They thrive at the intersections of race, caste, colour, age, gender, sexual orientation, class, landlessness, ethnicity, nationality, language and disability,” Mr Bautista said echoing the main observations of the Ecumenical statement delivered by the Nobel laurate and Archbishop Desmond Tutu during the holding of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban.

There was a general agreement that the world is witnessing a political tidal-wave of racism which was a shared concern. The rise of populist and nationalist parties in Europe and in the Americas was exploiting the hatred of the other by political parties to gain votes in national elections. There was acceptance of the fact that racism was not circumscribed to certain regions, but an evil of global proportions.

Therefore, it called not for grandstanding and holier-than-thy-neighbour attitudes but for joining forces from North and South, East and West, to counter and roll-back such trends. Furthermore, the conference deplored the absence of any reference to the DDPA in the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the UN and considered that national implementation plans should include such a reference. Finally, emphasis was put by the meeting on the implementation of a multi-year awareness promotion agenda and of addressing the issue of racism already at primary school level.

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